British forces attacked and killed opponents of colonial rule in Cyprus with impunity in the 1950s, new documents published today reveal.

The papers, released by the National Archives, implicate British forces in numerous abuses including the death of a blind man and a 17-year old youth.

One file includes the coroner’s report into the shooting of two Greek Cypriots by security forces in Acheritou, Famagusta, on July 30 1958.

The report shows that a patrol from 1st Battalion Royal Ulster Rifles clashed with a group of villagers and stones were thrown. Two villagers apparently grabbed the gun of one of the soldiers.

A shot was fired and one of the men was “shot through the head.”

The group then backed away. Calls for them to halt “had no effect,” the police officer wrote. Four shots were fired at one man described as the “ringleader” of the group, who was killed. It later transpired that the man was blind.

On September 9 1958 Coroner James Trainor concluded: “My finding is that the two deceased died from the injuries they received when a member of HM Forces discharged a firearm in the course of his duty and in the reasonable belief that his action was necessary to preserve military property and the lives of those under his command.”

The coroner accepted that the man on the ridge was blind, but added: “The fact that he got where he did … suggests a fanaticism which would fully explain the description given to me of him standing in front of the crowd and waving it forward and on another occasion standing sideways to the reservoir and summoning the mob from below.”

Another document shows that hundreds of Cypriots were rounded up by security forces after the fatal shooting of Catherine Cutliffe, the wife of a British army soldier, in Famagusta, in October 1958.

Dr George Himonides, district medical officer, said that 16 casualties were admitted to Famagusta Hospital in the hours after Ms Cutliffe was shot, and another nine over the next few days. These included five suffering from fractures of various bones, one with an injury to the eyeball and one, who later died, with a fractured skull.